Try So Hard
by The Hermione Granger Fan Club
Summary: Brin's thoughts after learning about Tinga's death.


I lie on my bunk in silence. It's the dead of night. Long ago, the X5s had been moved out of a communal dormitory into separate rooms. Strange, that they had spent so much time in our childhood teaching us the value of family before splitting us up and teaching the X5 class to act professionally, as soldiers.   
  
Family. Duty. Discipline.   
  
My sister, X5-656, is dead. I saw her body in the Manticore morgue, to be prepped for dissection and finally burial. We X5s had been marching back from evening weight training when we had stopped at the door. As a director had spoken briefly to us, I let my eyes wander and saw her, lying motionlessly on a cart.   
  
Anything that was even vaguely her had been sucked out of her lifeless body. Her skin was the grey of an unmourned death. Her hair, long as she had dreamed of having it in her youth, had been tied away from her shoulders so it wouldn't get in the way. It hung lankly. Her head lolled to one side like a restless dreamer.   
  
For the first time in many months, I let my emotions show as my mouth dropped open slightly and my eyes became rounded pools of grief. They shone. Nothing else mattered but seeing her corpse- it wasn't my sister. There was nothing of 656 in that... that object. A terrible shock and sadness clutched at me and I thought momentarily that she might be sick.  
  
I hug myself briefly in my cot and struggle not to cry. 656 was just another faceless soldier. There is no such thing as love.   
  
In my reindoctrination to my home, I was hooked up to several machines whole pictures were flashed before my eyes and I was asked to say what I honestly thought of the children in the pictures. 656's face, blank at ten years old, glared down at me from a floor-to-ceiling screen. "Who is this?" barked a soldier who I recognised as my weapons instructor from when I was about eight.   
  
"Tinga." An electric shock like nothing I had ever felt before tore at my body, searing at my tender skin and making me scream.   
  
"It's 656. State her designation, X5-734."  
  
"656. But her name is Tinga," I said stubbornly. Another shock. I cried out, pleading for it to stop.   
  
"How do you feel when you look at her?"  
  
"I'm angry. She never tried to contact me when we were separated after the escape. But... I love her."  
  
Wrong answer. I gasped as my skin stung and tears streamed from my bloodshot eyes. I felt tiny electric currents raise my hair.   
  
"THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS LOVE!" he roared, and I remembered briefly when Tinga would sneak me sympathetic glances after he'd bellowed at me in class.   
  
I contorted crazily in my seat as my limbs stuck out at unnatural angles. The pain banished kindly memories from me. I groaned.   
  
"No... no..." I sobbed, tried so hard to hold onto her face.   
  
"How do you feel when you look at her?"  
  
"She's my sister. I love her. I want her here with me."  
  
They spent a lot of time turning me against 656. Probably because they knew she was the one I loved the most. I will never forget the satisfied look on Lydecker's face as I mechanically gave the correct answers.   
  
"Who is this?"  
  
"X5-656, sir!"  
  
"How do you feel when you see her face?"  
  
"I hate her. I can't stand her. I want to break her with my bare hands, to make her cry and scream and beg me for mercy."  
  
"I can't hear you, X5-734!"  
  
I steeled myself. "I HATE HER!" I shrieked as loudly as I could.   
  
And yet... thinking of her prone limp body on the cart just beyond the slightly open door of the morgue, I can't hate her. I want to hug her and weep and plead with her never to leave me.   
  
But she wasted away in that tank, dying from her genetic anomaly. Director Renfro told me all about it. She told me how they were going to heal her so she could be a soldier again... my sister again.  
  
I have never felt like this. This is unlike anything I could ever dream of.   
  
Wait. That is not correct. Once...  
  
Both of us were seven and doing an exercise in the woods outside Manticore. Syl, her itchy trigger finger getting the best of her, impatiently jiggled her gun as we climbed to our feet. The scouts for our team- 493, 347 and 656- were returning through the high grass.   
  
I bumped into her back by accident and her gun went off like a thunderclap. 493 leapt through the air and 347 twisted to the side. 656 lost her cool and stood in a panicked freeze, her mouth a twisted silent scream.   
  
She dropped to the ground and we stared in shock. I reacted first. "TINGA!" I screamed, and hurtled through the high grass, pleading with myself, don't let her be dead, I killed her, I killed my sister, don't let her die, she can't die...  
  
And I skidded to a halt before her, as she lay in the grass clutching at her shoulder, blood staining her fingers and uniform.   
  
471 and 210 hauled her to her feet and, training forgotten, we began to escort her back to base. I looked around and saw Lydecker standing in the trees, watching us. I was afraid. This glimpse into our lives couldn't be good for us. Worst of all, he'd heard me call her Tinga.   
  
Even years later she still had a scar in her shoulder.   
  
656...  
  
She's dead. I will never be happy again.  
  
The next day, X5-619 and myself are called for a lecture in the DNA lab. The lecturer is late, so I amuse myself by looking at the vials of X5 DNA.   
  
I freeze.   
  
One is marked 331450074656.   
  
"Tinga..." I mouth in wonderment. I immediately tense up, like a child caught saying a bad word. 619 frowns at my back.   
  
Something seems to fire up inside of me. It's her. Well. Her DNA. Which means... could they make another one of her?  
  
Hope begins to whisper enticingly into my ear. They could bring her back from the dead...  
  
It's possible.  
  
Days pass. I mourn 656, seeing her everywhere at various ages. Over and over I replay unpleasant memories in my mind- the sight of her dead body in the morgue, the sound of the gunshot that could have killed her had she been half a step to the left.   
  
Day and night. Manticore is under attack. Renfro barks at me to defend the DNA lab from the invading rogue X5s. With a sickening remembrance, I quicken my pace. If they destroy the lab... my sister is gone forever.   
  
I surprise 452 in the hall. Or she surprises me. My mind is not on my mission. It is on my sister.  
  
Consequence. 452 cuffs one hand and foot to a metal bar. How could I have been so STUPID?  
  
"Someday you'll thank me for this," she says.  
  
I have to try and make her see sense. I try to remain calm. I take a breath.   
  
Then I remember 656's dead body, her soul gone forever, and become slightly hysterical. "You have no idea what you're doing. That's US back there!"  
  
656... Tinga. Tinga, no, I have to save her! Max, what are you DOING? They could bring her back and you'd kill her? You'd kill all of us?  
  
She retorts, "No, that's us out there!" She points to the Outside. That hateful, diseased, dirty place.   
  
She's really going to do it. She's going to take her away from me all over again. I can't bear it.   
  
"Come with me." Her voice seems very far away.   
  
I have nothing left.   
  
I glare in an unspoken rage and hatred. "Never," I snarl.   
  
She leaves. I try furiously to release myself. I have to save Tinga... whatever is left of her...  
  
And in a roar of flame, the DNA lab is blown up.   
  
I see the faces of the ones I've lost forever. Eva, who died before she ever knew the Outside. Jack, who was dragged from martial arts training and dissected like an animal.  
  
There is no more pain.   
  
Ben, who had his neck snapped by a mysterious assailant. Jace, who went AWOL and has never returned.   
  
There are no more orders.   
  
Zack and Max, who sent me back to a place both my Hell and my home.   
  
There is no more suffering.   
  
Tinga. My beautiful, caring, compassionate sister, the closest thing to a mother and a best friend and a big sister that I ever had. Tinga.   
  
Her face at various ages flies through my mind. I am with her. I am smiling. We are like angels.   
  
I die with what's left of Tinga in the hall. In my last moments, there are some beautiful, terrible truths that take hold of a frighteningly clear mind. My sister Tinga is not coming back, no matter what it says on a DNA vial. I love her. And very soon we will be together again.   
  
* * *  
  
DISCLAIMER: 'Dark Angel' belongs to Fox and James Cameron. Not me. So don't sue.   
  
NOTE: Ohhhh dear, I bet I get flamed so badly for this. I am gunna get flamed so badly I won't be able to see straight. I'll be reeling.   
  
Like I said in the notes for my other fic 'I Remember You', this is POST-reindoctrinated Brin, so please forgive me if she sounds evil. Brin is not evil. Brin rocks.   
  
I am completely for the theory that Brin is alive and out there somewhere (even though there'll be no Season 3 to prove that theory)... one day I may write an alternate universe story where Brin lives through the explosion. In fact, I probably will. But I thought it would be fun to write Brin's thoughts in the last days before she died. So also forgive me for that. I'm not one of those 'Brin is evil and she's NEVER coming back, even in fanfic!' people.  
  
It was fun. Even if I get a million and one flames for making Brin sound evil. Laters, all! 


End file.
